


let the whiteness of bones atone

by obfuscatress



Category: CARTER Angela - Works, The Tiger's Bride - Angela Carter
Genre: Cunnilingus, Other, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-26 00:17:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15651867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obfuscatress/pseuds/obfuscatress
Summary: This is how she was always meant to be: Stripped.





	let the whiteness of bones atone

**Author's Note:**

> Title from T. S. Eliot’s "Ash Wednesday II" (1930).

 

Summer in the cruel South is something else entirely. It crawls over the horizon without hurry, circling the land with the languid rises and falls of a predator’s scapulae - and it’s so unlike the season in Mother Russia where the land presses her children to her warm bosom in June, her Siberian chill turned fervent in two days’ time, the leaves and bugs sprung at once. No,  _ this _ heat stalks into the  _ palazzo _ the way the winter winds did: creeping in the cracks of the brick walls like this is its home, not yours, and you are hard pressed to argue when the horses sleep in the dining room and the vines grow into the shade in the parlour instead of up the front wall.

Six months it’s been since you surrendered yourself to this place and shucked not only your clothes but your skin too, and you have yet to grow weary of the world’s breath in the hide of your neck. Not all of Russia’s riches could give you this; no furs would sit on you like your own, no matter how soft, or dark, or at the expense of whose life, because these furs, they carry yours. In them, you are naked and dressed at once: glowing golden under a July sun caving into the weight of dusk, streaks of night sky already coming down on the world and dripping down your flanks.

Tonight though, you are disguised in skirts that have more layers than even your sheltered heart, for you are awaiting the Milord’s return from the  _ piazza _ where your father has stood for two days demanding you back. You saw him coming weeks ago, riding through Europe through the eyes of your mirror, and still you could not bear to go out and meet him yourself to break the news, though Milord had gifted you a new porcelain face specifically for the occasion, laid out in your chambers without comment.

You noticed instantly the author was whoever was behind his own: the skin white and cool as snow; the mouth an unsmiling, bloodstained moue with a beauty mark pencilled in above the lip; and the eyes hollowed out, so you can bear witness to the world with your own. Sitting on the back of the same stallion that first brought you to the  _ palazzo _ \- the very horse that carried you out to the stream where, for the first time, you stood pink skinned before the Milord - you feel the impatience of your girl’s heart resurface, erratic and restless. It doesn’t become you, this petulant sitting in disguise, skirts layered about your legs to hide your paws as the Ottoman robe hid his when you first arrived, but endure it you must, for you are made of legend and the beasts of legend are fallible when they aren’t hidden.

That is why the two of you stay out here, but the Milord has been gone two days now and you wonder if he is playing cards again to strip your father of his entitlement or if he’s rotting away on the marbled edge of the  _ fontana _ , bleeding out for you, his heart in the hands of a victorious hunter. As if to admonish you for thinking so little of him, his granite mare emerges from under the starry blanket rising in the east, the lacquered frame of his carriage turning into the country lane where you sit upon your steed.

Satisfied at last that he is returning to you, you set off toward the house in a gallop to reach it before him, your hurry doubled, but for different reasons. You tie your horse to a post in the stables where the valet may find him later and scurry up the wooden servants’ stairs, each step groaning with old age and new decay. Dressed as you are, you skip past his bedchamber where you slept in only the other night, curled around each other in all your feline glory.

The faces you wear today are not meant for this sanctuary. They’re made for the faded fairytale chamber he first introduced you to – dusty from a century’s vacancy, the pink upholstery faded, the tall windows spilling bleak light across two-hundred-year-old rugs as soft as the padding of your paws. Recently, you have replaced one of the rugs with the flayed husk of a great brown bear to sleep on (delivered to you by your father from the taiga, the only present of his you have accepted, though he ships you one weekly). You only lie here in the Milord’s absence, the misshapen muzzle a makeshift pillow you pretend is another’s face while he’s gone.

You step over it now to go stand by the window and pretend you’re fascinated with the landscape though it is little more than wheat caving under the weight of a relentless heat. In the distance, wilting trees remind you of the day in May Milord finally took you out to hunt and you think of how, when he skinned the dear you both sunk your teeth into, it did not turn into the likes of him as you did but tore into nothing more than flesh and blood.

The valet clears his throat in the doorway and draws you into July. “Milady,” he says as though you still have human ears he needs to interpret for and not merely a temper that won’t let you acknowledge the Milord.

When you turn to bestow him with a sidelong glance of flashing amber, the valet backs out of the room and shuts the door behind him, sensing whatever is to be said will be raw and tender as warm meat – in other words: not for his ears.

“My father?” you ask, foregoing all the words parsed together so carefully while you waited for his return. Your garments have grown too heavy on this body of yours that has become accustomed to liberation, so you must cut to the heart of things and slice right through it, pry it open with your bare hands to suss out the truth.

Milord straightens himself a little, then says, “Gone,” with a note of forced detachment threaded through the vowels, and you wonder what lingers beneath the lacquered surface of that single word.

For now, however, there are more pressing matters, the tension of an impending storm crackling restlessly between you.

Milord approaches you with two slow steps - on the prowl. He tugs off one of his ill fitted leather gloves to lift a paw to his face and unsheathes a single nail to sever the silk ribbon at his temple, his mask coming undone. From his face into his open palm it drops, shedding the man who brought you here to reveal the one that staked his claim on you after.

“Milady,” he says, the word distorted in the confines of his feline throat. It reminds you he’s a monster and you must look away to live with that, knowing you mirror him now.

He steps closer and you let him, though you bare your teeth in warning. It is not enough to deter him, but he slows, takes a moment to consider you as you consider him. You could growl at him and sink your claws into his neck; you could punish him with your teeth or soothe him with your tongue, knowing full well he would accept his fate without question.

Instead, you snarl - half a warning and half an invitation - as he fiddles with the buttons on your dress, sitting petulantly on the fence.

His paws are clumsy on the fabric – too  _ slow _ – and it’s threatening to call your bluff, so you graze his arm with your teeth and he tears your dress in two, buttons pinging anxiously off walls and windows. In another life (clothes of this quality a precious commodity then), you would be upset at this turn of events, but the  _ palazzo _ has changed you and your nakedness is a freedom greater than any other.

You let the Milord crowd you and push you towards the bed, pawing at your crêpe hair until the ribbon comes loose and it slips, gracelessly, to the floor. Splayed out on the mattress for him, all you have left is your mask – the face of the girl he once wagered an entire city for.

That, too, comes undone, and with it, the last shreds of your humanity.

Under the weight of his wandering, auric gaze, it feels as though this is how you were always meant to be: stripped. He must sense it too, because he grins – lascivious – and lowers his head into the downy fur on your stomach.

At first, you only feel the hot puff of his breath, a promise of what’s to come as he noses at you, delicate as a midnight’s breeze. In your impatience, you writhe underneath him, and he grins, offering a placating stroke of a warm tongue that sweeps your fur upwards as an electric current shoots through you in the opposite direction and your leg jerks on its own accord.

As if amused, he does it again, just to watch you squirm and you fight to stay still, feeling the tremor resonate in every last muscle you have until you bite into you own tongue for relief. He’s toying with you, you know, but even Milord’s patience isn’t endless.

His mouth settles between your thighs – familiar, yet dangerous – and you both  _ sigh _ . The tongue that once stripped you of your skin and tore you from yourself is now butter soft, infringing on you in an entirely different way. You seek it out as it seeks you, both of you in constant motion – tide upon a tide – and you keen at the thrill of the chase, mewl when it presses into you in earnest.

You could have never imagined this lying awake in your bedroom in St Petersburg, the nameless, untameable feeling that flickered in your gut like the stubborn flame of a single candle now a raging forest fire: blindingly bright even behind closed eyes, racing to envelope and devour every one of your nerve ending with its sizzle.

Milord nuzzles closer, insistent, and the heat doubles up. His incisors – dulled by the intimate proximity – press into your hips until you are melded together, bone to bone, and you wonder if you’ll bruise.

_ God _ , you think, how reluctant you were to even undress in front of him once, yet here you are: throwing yourself at him in reckless abandon. He raises his head briefly, eyes shining through the paper strips of his wig, alight like the earth’s core, and you catch a glimpse of yourself int them: reborn.

His shoulder blades shift in his back as he sinks back into you and your eyes drift across the ceiling to the headboard and into the back of your head where darkness becomes an elemental force.

Shoving your leg up higher on his shoulder, he buries his face between your thighs with a finality you know all too well, the tip of his tongue both swift and delicate in a way that lights stars on the black canvas of your mind. He flattens his tongue out for a languid stroke that could shift tectonic plates, rattling all your seams. It’s too much and not enough at once, so you struggle to get away from him even as you seek more, the quiver of your hips and the pressure of soft paws on tense meat drawing a moan out of you.

Taking it both as praise and encouragement, Milord erupts into a bone shattering purr, and it tears through you unencumbered: dilutes you out into every last atom of the world before it draws you back into yourself with an intensity that knocks the breath out of you.

You’re still heaving when he pushes himself up on his front paws, his purr now spreading through the air into cracks in the walls rather than into the mattress through you. Eyes ablaze with the self-satisfaction of an old servant, he licks his gleaming lips, and the sight of it is almost enough to undo you a second time.

But the Milord won’t grant you anything more, merely picks up his gloves and mask before he retreats into the bowels of the house, the rumble of his voice in the walls the only thing he leaves behind.

When you go to find him hours later in his lair, dressed in your own furs instead of someone else’s, he’s curled up in his bed, tamed by sleep. He stirs at the sound of the door, head rising just enough for his eyes to flash in the light of the fire burning perpetually in this windowless room. He flicks an inquisitive ear at you, looking bleary eyed and a little bored all the same, and you put on your best pleading look as you test the waters by lowering yourself onto the mattress.

Somewhere on the borders of these desolate lands, a lonely wolf howls miserably into the night, and you think  _ in Russia, he would startle the horses _ . But here they have nothing to fear, for there are larger and much kinder beasts closer to home.

You crawl into bed with one of them, settling into the notion that you are the other, and he makes room for you – lets you tuck your head into the fuzz under his jaw and dart your tongue out to give him an affectionate lick. He hasn’t slept since he left, too agitated by the pretense of being human to ever quite slip away, so he yawns: mouth wide open and ferocious – all teeth and tongue and a long, warm breath that smells of you. He knows you’ve spent these last few hours in your quarters watching your father mourn the daughter he gambled away so recklessly and could now no longer recognize even if she were to return, your wind-up servant limping cheerfully around the room as he cried, but Milord does not mention these things to you. Instead, he rests his chin against the flat space between your eyes and drifts, quietly, into oblivion.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on twitter @shippress.


End file.
